


Keep My Head Up

by phresine



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 10:58:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17980052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phresine/pseuds/phresine
Summary: Suzaku inherited his hair from his mother. Or so he’s told.





	Keep My Head Up

Suzaku is five, and his father is running late.

Which makes Suzaku late as well, but his father is due to attend some event with other loud men in boxy Britannian suits, and louder Britannian men in even more boxy Britannian suits, and Suzaku would much rather spend the evening in the courtyard practicing for his kendo tournament next month.

“Do something about his hair,” his father snaps at the maid, hurling a comb at her. She fumbles to catch it before it falls. “It looks like he fell into some brambles and is still living amongst them.”

Suzaku has his mouth open ready with a retort when the maid sends him a quelling look. The maid he knows better than his often-absent father, so he clasps his lips together firmly, if reluctantly.

Once his father has left the room to shout and be irritated in another part of the house, the maid runs the comb through his hair and sighs. She presses the comb into Suzaku’s hands, clearly having judged it ineffective, and says, “Have you an iron in the house?”

Suzaku wrenches himself away from her. “You’re not ironing my hair,” Suzaku says hotly.

By iron, he later learns, when yet more loud Britannians have come and shouted and two smaller, quieter Britannians have been installed in the old monk’s quarters at the top of the Kururugi Shrine, his father’s maid didn’t mean an iron for pressing shirts. Lelouch vi Britannia’s hands move briskly through his sister’s hair, parting it into equal sections and whirling it around some black device like Suzaku would twist chopsticks through udon.

“Stop staring,” Lelouch snaps.

Suzaku steps out of the shadow of the doorway. “I wasn’t staring,” he snaps back sullenly, embarrassed at having been caught doing just that.

Nunnally smiles at him brilliantly, without moving her head. “Suzaku, hello! Lelouch, be kind.”

“I am being kind,” Lelouch says sulkily, but his hands don’t pause in their rapid movements.

“What are you doing?” Suzaku demanded to know.

Lelouch’s eyes narrow. “What are _you_ doing?”

Suzaku, who doesn’t yet see the need to inform the Britannians he had been instructed to bring them down to the main house for breakfast, not when Lelouch is so ungrateful, shoots in return, “Don’t answer questions with questions!”

“My brother is fixing my hair,” Nunnally interjects, her voice and soft and sweet.

“And that black thing is?”

“A hair iron,” Lelouch says shortly. In a much gentler voice, he says, “Nunnally, your hair doesn’t need fixing. I’m just refining it the way m — mother would prefer us to in front of company.”

Weeks later, after Suzaku helps a frantic Lelouch find a wayward Nunnally, and Lelouch has helped Suzaku write a more intelligently worded response to his father for something or other, and they’ve had a small series of adventures and tumbles besides, Lelouch offers to use the iron on Suzaku’s hair.

“No thanks,” Suzaku says instantly, having burnt his tongue on some tea earlier that morning. Hot things are not for him.

It’s a remarkable sign of their progress that Lelouch does not take offense and says, “Suit yourself,” with a shrug, before turning the iron on himself. Suzaku’s doesn’t quite understand what Lelouch is trying to achieve when he runs the iron through his and Nunnally’s hair. It looks nicer, but not in any way that Suzaku can place his finger on, so Suzaku reasons it can’t be that much more significant than anything Suzaku can achieve with his father's comb.

And then everything collapses and no-one has the time to care about Suzaku’s hair much until he’s standing in front of his commanding officer, being told in no uncertain terms that his hair is breaking regulations.

“Yes, sir!” he says readily every time he is called up on his hair even as his commanding officer’s face gets readily redder. He’s quite frankly at a loss. His father’s comb is not much use here, and he suspects shaving all his hairoff would somehow be misconstrued as being sarcastic.

Suzaku’s world lurches again when he briefly runs into Lelouch and a green haired prisoner in the bowels of the Area 11 ghettos, and then he is thrust deeper into the military. Probably it discredits him further to the public when he is seen on camera with his hair running amok and unruly, so he finds himself being tossed about and slammed into walls while incarcerated, and his hair becoming even more matted and wild.

When he is released into Lord Asplund's supervision, the man gives him a little, cheering sort of applause. “Congratulations! I shall see you tomorrow at work, hmm?” leaving Ms Cecille to throw him an admonishing look that has both Lloyd and Suzaku feeling chastened.

“We did our best to have you handed over from the government to the military, even Lloyd,” Cecille says in a reassuring manner, though Suzaku doesn’t really see the distinction between the two here, or how Suzaku would have been treated any differently. She fusses at Suzaku’s clothes, and says, “You poor thing, everything's askew.”

Suzaku patiently allows her to tug everything in place but when she reaches for his head he smiles and says, “Don’t worry about my hair. It’s always like that.”

“Does his hair affect his ability to pilot my Lancelot? If not, I care not, ” Lloyd offers from the sidelines, and gives his strange cheering applause again. “Congratulations again, Kururugi! Until tomorrow!”

He meets Euphemia, who is gentle and kind and accepting in every way. Ashford cares more about Euphemia’s position and pockets than they do any aspect of Suzaku, barring his attendance and his grades, so his hair goes unremarked upon save for when, giggling, Euphemia notes it looks softer than the clouds above as they tour the gardens in the Viceroy’s Palace. It’s a beautiful day with high blue skies Suzaku feels he could fall into and live in forever.

He is pulled back into Lelouch and Nunnally’s world, and it’s reassuring that despite everything, the siblings’ perfectly styled locks have remained a constant. Soon he is elevated to a point where even the most ardent follower of His Emperor’s ideology has cause to pause for thought before criticising him. Save for Princess Cornelia, whose eyes narrow mightily whenever they have cause for their paths to cross, but Suzaku knows she has greater concerns on her mind.

And then his world falls apart for a second time.

—

Suzaku somehow manages to lose his father’s comb somewhere in the process of moving his worldly possessions from his military dormitory in Area 11 to his new suite of rooms as a member of the Knight of Rounds in Pendragon Imperial Palace. Suzaku takes a moment to wonder how, as he hadn’t had many worldly possessions to misplace to begin with, before replacing the comb and putting it firmly out of mind.

He could have easily gone on without one, having reached such a status where almost none save the Emperor himself can truly touch him. Only Gino talks about the state of his hair in his hearing, and has somehow managed to unearth a photo album from Ashford.

“Wow, your hair’s really grown out,” Gino exclaims. He lifts the album to near eye-level, so he can flick his eyes more easily between it and Suzaku. “Hey, Anya, check this out,” he saya, and Anya dutifully takes a picture.

Suzaku thinks the palace barbers have been trimming his hair longer than he would normally have it, a suspicion that is confirmed when Suzaku’s world takes another skip to the side and Lelouch installs himself in the Palace, together with the green haired prisoner from Area 11, whose name Suzaku learns is C.C. The palace barber leaves Lelouch’s too long in the back as well, and when they’ve no staff or company in attendance, C.C. will tug at it teasingly, which Lelouch bats his hand at but otherwise tolerates.

Lelouch still has his hair iron. They’re in transit in the Damocles over the Pacific and Suzaku has gone to find Lelouch in his rooms where he finds Lelouch seated at a large vanity, iron whipping through hair as news reports play on a screen placed before him.

Suzaku isn’t C.C., so he doesn’t pull at Lelouch’s hair, but he does say, “How do you manage to find the time to do that?”

“Appearances matter,” Lelouch says with an airy sort of self-satisfaction. There are deep shadows under his eyes, hidden now where Lelouch has dabbed at them with thick creams to hide the fact that at most Lelouch snatches naps in between all the wrangling one has to do as Emperor when one doesn’t have any of the trusted advisors that usually accompany the position.

Out if the corner of his eye, Suzaku spots a familiar looking comb resting on the bedside table. “That’s my father’s comb.”

Lelouch’s fingers falter as he twists in his seat to see where Suzaku is pointing. “These used to be Nunnally’s rooms.” An expression of vague discomfort flits across his face. “Now I remember. Nunnally found it in the Student Council Rooms. She thought it was yours, but wasn’t sure. She meant to give it back to you.” Lelouch had already turned back to the mirror. “Would you like it back?”

Suzaku has long left behind any of the trappings that tie him to the Suzaku Kururugi that he was. His last significant possession, his father’s watch, had been laid to rest with Euphy. Everything else he had burnt. He doesn’t need them as Knight of Zero, and would need them even less when he took up Zero’s mantle. “No,” Suzaku says honestly, and waits silently for Lelouch to finish.

Lelouch snaps the tongs of the iron together decisively, and lays it down. He turns his head, hair swaying with the motion before falling neatly into place. “Are you ready, my Knight?”

Suzaku sinks to a single knee, fist over his heart. “Yes, your Majesty.”

—

After it’s all over, Kallen turns up at the Viceroy’s Palace while Nunnally is in residence, and demands an audience with Zero.

They assemble in a small secure room, just he, Nunnally, and Kallen. Suzaku presses the mechanism that has Zero’s mask releasing its seals, and shakes his hair out when he takes it off, as the mask always seems to leave his hair damp and flattened.

“I knew it,” Kallen whispers with no sense of victory. She gapes at him for several long moments before she says, fumbling for words, for a reaction, “Your hair looks a mess,” but honestly, Suzaku is long past the point of caring about what his hair looks like.

**Author's Note:**

> ♫ Keep my head up, I know I’ll be fine... I whip my hair back and forth (Whip my hair — Willow)
> 
> Have 1,500+ words about Suzaku’s hair because I was incredulous Suzaku made it through the military without once being chewed out about how ridiculously fluffy it is.


End file.
